SpaceX’s dominance has continued to grow in the 2020s. It hit new launch records every year from 2020 to 2025. It is now responsible for 82% of U.S. space launches.
SpaceX’s commercial launch pace and market share capture have been impressive, to say the least:
- 2020: 25 commercial launches, 64% market share
- 2021: 32 commercial launches, 59% market share
- 2022: 57 commercial launches, 72% market share
- 2023: 92 commercial launches, 80% market share
- 2024: 130 commercial launches, 84% market share
- 2025: 161 commercial launches, 82% market share
SpaceX's S-1 prospectus, filed on May 20, 2026, provides an additional measure of dominance: global mass-to-orbit. SpaceX launched 2,213 metric tons to orbit in 2025, more than 80% of total global mass-to-orbit for the year. By comparison, CASC, the second-largest launch provider globally by orbital launches, carried an estimated 262 kilograms, roughly 12% of SpaceX's total, according to BryceTech.
Space launches by country
From 1957 until its dissolution in 1991, the USSR conducted 2,760 space launches, more than twice as many as the U.S. (1,221). Despite what the space launch numbers suggest, however, the United States clearly had the more successful space program, winning the race to land humans on the moon, and developing and flying reusable space shuttles 135 times. (The Soviets also developed a shuttle, the Buran, but it flew only once -- uncrewed -- in 1988).
In more recent years, and especially since the start of the Ukraine war, Russian launches have slowed considerably. It has ceded its second-place position in space to China, where launches are accelerating. Still, the U.S. remains far and away the leader in space exploration, launching 7,605 times from 2010 through 2023, versus 3,277 times for the rest of the world combined.